TONY PARK’S THRILLER IVORY PUBLISHED IN THE US BY ST. MARTINS PRESS

Hot on the heels of UK, Australian and South African publication of Australian bestseller Tony Park’s latest thriller, AN EMPTY COAST, his earlier title IVORY is now available for his North American fans, published by St. Martin’s Press.

 Kirkus gave IVORY a Starred Review pre-publication describing it as ‘a fast-moving thriller … The action here is crisp and nearly nonstop. Even when the story looks like it's finally winding down, one last crisis appears. A compelling tale filled with tension, blood, and a disturbing moral question: will humans stop killing Africa's large animals before they become extinct?’

Alex Tremain is a pirate in trouble. The two women in his life – one of them his financial adviser, the other his diesel mechanic – have left him. He’s facing a mounting tide of debts and his crew of modern-day buccaneers, a multi-national band of ex-military cutthroats, are getting restless. They don’t all share his dream of going legit, but what Alex really wants is to re-open the five-star resort hotel which once belonged to his Portuguese mother and English father on the Island of Dreams, off the coast of Mozambique.

A chance raid on a wildlife smugglers’ ship sets the Chinese triads after him and, to add to his woes, corporate lawyer Jane Humphries lands, literally, in his lap. Another woman’s the last thing Captain Tremain needs right now – especially one whose lover is a ruthless shipping magnate backed up by a deadly bunch of contract killers.

What Alex really needs is one last, big heist – something valuable enough to fulfil his dreams and set him and his men up for life. When the South African government makes a controversial decision to reinstitute the culling of elephants in its national parks, Alex finds the answer to his prayers, but at what cost?

Tony Park grew up in Australia and fell in love with South Africa on a short trip in 1995: he and his wife now divide their time between two homes, one in Sydney and another in South Africa on the border of the Kruger National Park. Author of twelve bestselling thrillers, he has worked as a newspaper reporter in Australia and England, a government press secretary, a public relations consultant, and a freelance writer. He is also a major in the Australian Army Reserve and served six months in Afghanistan in 2002. His work has been sold in translation in seven countries and Macmillan UK have recently signed him up for a two-book deal, starting with AN EMPTY COAST.

You can find out more about Tony Park on his website and his Facebook page and you can follow him on Twitter (especially if you want to see some marvellous images of African wildlife) on @tonyparkauthor.

PRAISE FOR THE AUTHOR:

‘Park excels at capturing the wilds of the continent, as well as its political and commercial pressures.’ -- Publisher’s Weekly

'An author who is starting to challenge the veteran Wilbur Smith for the title of 'master of the African thriller' -- Geoffrey Wansell, Daily Mail

'Tony Park is one of Australia's best thriller writers and his African-based novels are consistently entertaining and thought-provoking.' -- Canberra Times

'Park's heroes are tough, blokey types – soldiers and coppers - and his heroines sassy and smart, but Africa always steals the show…a great way to spend a winter evening, transported to somewhere warm and exotic.' -- Georgia Gowing, The Independent Weekly

'He just gets better and better. His descriptions of the southern African bush and mountain jungles are so vivid you can just about feel the sun on your skin and smell the dust and animals.' -- Frank Walker, Sun Herald

'If you like action adventures, with a spy theme, some education – either travel or technological - and a little romance, then this guy's for real… What puts this into the top echelon of the genre is that the people, even the heroes, are fallible human beings.' -- June Joyce, Waikato Times

Liu Yifei stars in The Chinese Widow for Zhejiang Roc Pictures

Chinese-American actress Liu Yifei (THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM, THE ASSASSINS) stars as protagonist Ying in the new feature film written by Greg Latter (NIGHT TRAIN TO LISBON,  GOODBYE BAFANA) for Zhejiang Roc Pictures of Hangzhou.

Principal photography has begun in China, stay tuned for further information on the shoot and release.

MARGOT AT WAR published in paperback today

Anne de Courcy’s thrilling true story of Margot Asquith, wife to the Prime Minister during World War One, MARGOT AT WAR, is out today in paperback from Weidenfeld & Nicholson.

Known for her wit, style and habit of speaking her mind, Margot Asquith transformed 10 Downing Street into a glittering social and intellectual salon. Drawing on unpublished material from personal papers and diaries, Anne de Courcy vividly recreates this extraordinary time when the Prime Minister’s residence was run like an English country house, with socialising taking precedence over politics, love letters written in the cabinet room and gossip and state secrets exchanged over the bridge table. It tells of Margot’s heartbreak as she witnessed her much older husband fall hopelessly in love with a young friend. 

The book was shortlisted for Political Book of the Year 2015 in the Paddy Power Political Book Awards.

Anne de Courcy is the author of many highly acclaimed works of biography and social history, and her bestselling THE FISHING FLEET (film rights sold at auction to Ridley Scott) was chosen as one of Lady Antonia Fraser’s best books of 2012 in The Daily Mail.

 Praise for Anne de Courcy:

‘Anne de Courcy combines the perseverance of the social historian with the panache of a novelist’ – The Sunday Times

‘Compulsively readable, and immaculately researched… popular social history at its very best’ – Mail on Sunday

THE FOLLY PUBLISHED IN THE UK BY AND OTHER STORIES

Ivan Vladislavić’s THE FOLLY is out now in the UK, published by And Other Stories. The novella was originally published twenty years ago, heralding the arrival of a unique and surprising voice in fiction. It was read then as an evocative allegory on the rise and fall of apartheid, but continues to strike new chords, its haunting characters speaking strange truths to our world today. THE FOLLY is published in South Africa by Umuzi and Archipelago published in the US in September, when Ivan Vladislavić was in the country to receive his Windham Campbell Prize for fiction. At a ceremony at Yale University he was awarded one of this year’s nine $150,000 prizes for Fiction, alongside writers Teju Cole, Helon Habila, Geoff Dyer and Edmund de Waal, among others.

On first publication THE FOLLY was hailed by André Brink as being ‘In the tradition of Elias Canetti, a tour de force of the imagination’ and its new edition has already drawn much praise. Nicholas Lezard has picked it as Paperback of the Week in the Guardian and spoken of its ‘fabulistic timelessness’ and other reviewers have described it as follows:

‘THE FOLLY is mysterious, lyrical and wickedly funny — a masterful novel about loving and fearing your neighbour. Ivan Vladislavić is one of the most significant writers working in English today. Everyone should read him.’ — Katie Kitamura

‘The rise and fall of ‘the plan’ at the heart of this potent short novel is as brilliant as it is unsettling. Vladislavić writes with spring-loaded precision about universal dreams and local desolation. A fable for the ages, a parable for our time.’ — Laird Hunt

‘Vladislavić’s cryptic, haunting tale echoes Jorge Luis Borges and David Lynch, drawing readers into its strange depths.’ — Publishers Weekly

'Memorable work that never underplays the unpleasant societal tensions that lie below the surface. … THE FOLLY plays out like a berserk blend of fairy tales, the plays of Samuel Beckett, and the films of Jacques Tati.’ – Tobias Carroll, Electric Lit

In THE FOLLY Mr and Mrs Malgas are going quietly about their lives when an eccentric squatter named Nieuwenhuizen arrives on the vacant plot next door, with a scheme to build an elaborate mansion. Slowly but surely the stranger's charm and persuasive language draws Malgas into "the plan". Grimly humorous and playfully serious, Ivan Vladislavić’s classic first novel is a comic and philosophical masterpiece.

Ivan Vladislavić is the award-winning, critically-acclaimed author of a prestigious body of literary work, published in several international markets. Ivan lives in Johannesburg, where he is a Distinguished Professor in Creative Writing at the University of the Witwatersrand and has won and been shortlisted for South Africa’s most prestigious prizes.  His work is included in the GRANTA BOOK OF THE AFRICAN SHORT STORY and Sylph Editions published A LABOUR OF MOLES in the Cahiers Series. His novel DOUBLE NEGATIVE has just been published in Germany by A1 and Osburg have acquired German rights to THE EXPLODED VIEW, for publication in 2016.  And Other Stories published his new short story collection 101 DETECTIVES earlier this year.

Read a new short story ‘Catch’ by Ivan on Visual Verse.

Visit Ivan's website.

RACHEL'S BLUE BY ZAKES MDA LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL IMPAC DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 2016

Zakes Mda’s RACHEL’S BLUE has been longlisted for the 2016 International DUBLIN Literary Award, alongside fellow Blake Friedmann author Joseph O’Connor, and other authors like David Grossman, Haruki Murakami, Rabih Allamedine, Neel Mukherjee, Michael Cunningham, Ali Smith and Helen Oyeyemi. Books are nominated for the Award by invited public libraries in cities throughout the world - making the Award unique in its coverage of international fiction. Titles are nominated on the basis of 'high literary merit' as determined by the nominating library.

Mda’s book was selected by the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Library and Information Services, South Africa and explores the suffocating nature of a small-town community, prejudice, and the complicated relationship that develops when the boundaries of love and friendship become confused between two high-school friends reunited in adulthood.  Novelist Zakes Mda has made a name for himself as a key chronicler of the new, post-apartheid South Africa, casting a satirical eye on its claims of political unity, its rising black middle class, and other aspects of its complicated, multiracial society.

In this novel, however, he turns his lens elsewhere: to a college town in Ohio. Here he finds human relations and the battle between the community and the individual no less compelling, or ridiculous. In Athens, Ohio, old high school friends Rachel Boucher and Jason de Klerk reconnect­ and rekindle a relationship that quickly becomes passionate. Initially, all seems well. Not only the couple, but their friends and family, are happy at this unexpected conjunction. But then Rachel meets someone else. Jason’s anger boils over into violence—violence that turns the community on its head, pitting friends and neighbours against one another. And all this happens before Rachel realizes she’s pregnant.

RACHEL’S BLUE was written as a response to the legal situation that persists in many US states today – that the father of a child conceived from rape can claim the same paternity rights as any father. Although RACHEL’S BLUE is set in Athens County, Ohio, many of the issues raised in the book are familiar to South Africa and reviewer Eckard Smuts wrote on SlipNet that “one of the novel’s strongest accomplishments is the ease with which Mda has transplanted his sensitivity to such issues – and to their human impact – from the more familiar South African setting of his earlier work to the apparently fertile grounds of the American Midwest.”

RACHEL’S BLUE won the University of Johannesburg Prize 2014, and you can learn more about that and read the first chapter of the novel here.  It is published in South Africa by Kwela, and Seagull Press will bring out an edition for the UK and the US in early 2016.

Zakes Mda is the author of the much loved classics of South African literature WAYS OF DYING and THE HEART OF REDNESS, among many others. He was born in the Eastern Cape, but spent his early childhood in Soweto, finishing his school education in Lesotho. He is a prolific writer of novels, plays, poems and articles for academic journals and newspapers, and his writing has been translated into twenty languages. His creative work also includes painting, and theatre and film productions. Mda, whose forebears were exiled from Qumbu to Lesotho after the assassination of Hamilton Hope, is a recipient of South Africa’s Order of Ikhamanga. He is based in Athens, Ohio, where he spends his time writing and teaching.

Penguin Random South Africa’s Umuzi imprint will publish his new novel LITTLE SUNS next month.

Praise for Zakes Mda

‘Mda writes from the inside with a rare combination of passion and truth that will connect with readers everywhere.’ Booklist

‘A voice for which one should feel not only affection but admiration.’ New York Times

‘Zakes Mda is among the most acclaimed exponents of a new artistic freedom. His fiction has a beguiling lyricism and humour.’ The Guardian